Trying to catch just one good egg

Thursday, 16 March 2006

You Do the Math

I was all set to blog about the front page cover story that threw me for a loop on USA Today as I was headed into the city to color my grey hairs. I was feeling a bit old and wanting to prepare for my trip. That story got me thinking. But before I could collect my thoughts and start typing away I read a post that really irked me in my guiltiest pleasure, Celebrity Baby Blog.

Now, I'm as celebrity obsessed as the next gal and love to try to figure out the whole 'has she had work done?' or 'did they use donor eggs?'

I love the Hollywood power couple that recently had twins via surrogate. Truly, I do.

But please, people, or People as the case might be, you can't seriously expect me to believe that these twins are the biological twins of both parents? This is what that couple is claiming in the latest issue of that magazine.

Soooo, let's do the math, shall we?

She's now 47. So she was either 46 or 47 when said boy/girl twins were conceived. The latest stats from the CDC are for 2003 but I really think that these haven't changed much, if at all, for the last couple of years.

From looking at Figure 38 , aka Percentage of ART cycles using Donor Eggs by ART Patient's Age 2003, we see that at age 46, there is at 76.6% chance of DE, at 47 it increases to 80.8% and over 47 it's 89.9%. Now, that's not even live birth rates, just cycle percent rates.

So what about the live birth rates for 46 and 47 year olds? The next figure shows that at 46 there's a 4.6% chance of live birth with own eggs vs 45.7% chance with donor eggs and at 47 there's a 4.2% chance of live birth with own eggs vs 44.6% with donor eggs, again that's cycles started.

So what does this really boil down to? There were 364 ART cycles started for women over 45. There were 12 pregnancies. And only 7 live births. Out of these, 5 were singletons. So there were two sets of multiples. Of course they could have been triplets.

So there is a chance that this couple is super-duper lucky. They could have totally won the baby jackpot. Two couples/women did, after all. I'm sure they have the money and resources to pursue a number of cycles.

I know this is a whole lot of boring numbers. I also totally respect this couple not wanting to say they used donor eggs (if they did), but I really, really, really don't like what they said here.

See, what I hate most is the apparent take home message is that biology and genetics are the most important factors in being a parent. This couple could have said that they wanted to be parents more than anything and moved heaven and earth to make that happen. They could have said they got incredibly lucky but realized the most important thing was just they now had the opportunity to parent. But they didn't.

I wonder too if she had eggs frozen or embryos from previous cycles. The fact that a surrogate was used makes me think that there was maybe no problem getting pregnant but more of a problem staying pregnant. Who knows?

Lots of people do not want to acknowledge using donor eggs and that is their prerogative whether a celebrity or not. What really chaps my hide is that some poor woman will be stting there reading and thinking "I still have plenty of time when there are 47 yr old women having twins". It gives false hope, in my opinion.

Anyhoo, enough of that. Bring on the hair dye and lets get this SA party started. I am so excited for you. How is the mister going to occupy his time without you???

I agree, I thought at 30 I had plenty of time and was completely astonished to find out the statistics. It would be nice if celebrities, who have so much publicity, would occasionally use it to promote a better understanding of fertility issues. I do think that people deserve their privacy, but I dislike the way that people seem to place so much emphasis on genetics. If it is true that the child is "biologically" theirs, I still don't think it is necessary to emphasize that aspect of a birth.

Not Debora Spar again! I am so sick of her book..."babies are for sale!" could this be any more sensationalist?? I have never read a story about if, ivf or de that does not go that route. I am 20 weeks pg w/de twins...last time I checked I didn't bring home an actual baby though.
I doubt if Angela Bassett is telling the truth but I don't know for sure of course. I absolutely agree that most people are uninformed on what the stats are and there are ways to answer without answering if you know what I mean. "These are my babies..."

Very interesting breakdown of the numbers! I suppose frozen embryos are possible, but DE is more likely. I expect the percentage of DE babies in Hollywood is pretty high; you can't tell me all those women in their mid to late 40s are consistently hitting the egg jackpot, even with all the resources in the world to pursue fertility treatment.

The thing I love about celebrities and ART is that they have publicists and agents and bodyguards and all this insulation, and ordinary folk don't, which means that it's the ordinary folks who have to spend twenty minutes explaining to assvicey friends and family members that just because Celebrity X had a baby at (insert advanced maternal age here) doesn't mean that if they just relaaaaaaaaax, they'll have the same results.

"I don't know why you're so worried! Look at So and So! She just had twins, and she's older than you. Maybe you just need to stop worrying about it so much."

This stuff frustrates me beyond belief. Kudos to people like Brooke Shields for telling it like it is. But I have to say it was the Jennie Garth stuff that really made me spit blood this week: "our babies just come along when we're ready for them". UGGGH!

You know the most annoying thing for me in all this is not the couple, who have decided for their own reasons what they will and won't keep private (totally respect), but the lazy journalism!
There is the less than 1% chance that these are their own eggs, but surely a journalist that has properly researched this story would have found all the statistics that you have Millie?
If the questions had been asked and answered, then with the kinds of statistics making this kind of conception possible, why would a journalist not think to give some more information on how a woman of that age defied the incredible odds?
It would have made this a real story - rather than the fantasy puff piece it is.

Hey, Millie. I am very ambivalent/hypocritical on this topic. On one hand, I plan on "not telling the truth" about having a baby through DE (if it happens, that is), but yet feel like celebrities should bring it out in the open to further our cause, if you will. My grandmother had my mom, the youngest of 8, at 48, so I guess it is possible. I mean, I certainly thought I had plenty of time. And I guess it's possible they did the whole PGD thing...maybe over a period of time, they created lots of little frozen embryos through multiple extractions and picked the best ones to give to the surrogate. They certainly have the money if they wanted to do it that way. I guess the thing that really bums me out, is why does anyone (including/especially me) care? It's certainly none of my business, but yet I'm obsessed with the whole thing. Hmmm.